Starting with electronics

Starting with electronics

Even having minor knowledge in electronics is really cool.
You can fix way more things than before and if your car won't start,
you can even figure out why.
You can build your own gadgets and this is really nerdy.

So how to start?

The first thing you have to have is interest.
Without real interest, you can't learn well.
But I think, if you read this tutorial, you have interest.

The second thing is knowledge.
Where do you get knowledge?
Right here on blogspot:
http://electronic-ebooks.blogspot.com/2007/02/art-of-electronics.html

Or on another good site:
http://openbookproject.net/electricCircuits/

If this is not enough, ask Wikipedia or ask questions in forums like
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/ or http://embdev.net/ .

Then, get on to ask people.
Read what other people built and try to copy it if you like it.
Read the hackaday feed (look at the right side of my site).
Listen to blogs like http://www.eevblog.com/ or

Then the third thing.
It's parts.
So where do you get parts from?
 You get them from old stuff and component suppliers like digikey, mouser or element 14 or any others. I haven't been payed by them telling you this, these were the first that came into my mind.
Since most of the electronic garbage still contains usable parts,
it's an ingenious source for cheap parts.
What do you need else?
 Well, you need a power supply and batteries aren't very good because they
will get empty and their voltage will drop down while discharging them.
 So use a net bound power supply, please!
If you are careful and attentive, nothing bad will happen.
So keep your eyes open and look you use a power supply that will give you
 around 6 volts and approximate 500 milliamps.
 Then, get some resistors, small lamps (like 3 Volts, 100 milliamps in most bikes),
switches and a breadboard.
A breadboard is a thing where you can plug your components in and you doesn't have to
solder them.
If you go further, you will need some transistors, capacitors, integrated circuits, and so on.
 In case you want to use micro-controllers, check out the arduino.
 This is a small board with an ATMEL micro-controller on it and a USB-Port to program it with a computer.
You needn't use this one, there are enough other sets like the picaxe or the TI launchpad,
but I think the ATMEL micros are the best for beginners due to them being simple and powerful.
There is no need to use Assembler for them because there is C.
Many people argument that C is not on the hardware layer, but since you can acces single
registers, C is the language of choice. It is almost easy to learn if you can program in
other languages like Java or Visual Basic.

So, simply try out and tell me if I forgot to mention something.
Get on hacking!